McGann v. State

• Decision Date: 06 April 1936
• Docket Number: 32178
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: MCGANN v. STATE

167 So. 53

175 Miss. 320

MCGANN v. STATE

No. 32178

Supreme Court of Mississippi

April 6, 1936

(Division B.)

1. CRIMINAL LAW.

Defendant who represented to purchaser of growing timber that land on which timber stood was no part of her homestead, and who subsequently obtained injunction against removal of timber on ground land was homestead, was properly convicted of obtaining money under false pretenses, as against contention that defendant was insane when deed was made.

2. CRIMINAL LAW.

Test of responsibility for crime where insanity is defense is whether defendant knew difference between right and wrong.

Division B

APPEAL from circuit court of Pontotoc county.

HON THOS. H. JOHNSTON, Judge.

Mrs Mamie McGann was convicted of obtaining money under false pretenses, and she appeals. Affirmed.

Affirmed.

C. P and S. H. Long, of Tupelo, for appellant.

The uncontradicted testimony was as shown by the record that appellant was in the year 1932 adjudged insane by the proper authorities of Tallahatchie county and sent to the asylum and had been at least on one other occasion so adjudged by the proper authorities of the state of Arkansas and confined in the asylum of that state, as a lunatic and in fact had been in the asylum in one or the other of these states for periods of time varying in length on several occasions. In addition to this testimony, the record of the appellant's conduct and what occurred during the progress of the trial and by reason of which the trial of the cause had to be temporarily suspended and the testimony of the doctors who testified in the case as to her condition at the time of the trial, and a short time before, all shows this woman was unaccountable criminally for her actions at the time of the trial. None of this evidence was contradicted or attempted to be contradicted except certain witnesses were placed on the stand as witnesses for the state in rebuttal, who testified that she was sane on March 6, 1935, the day she made the deed. Not one word of evidence was introduced by the state as to her mental condition at any other time except on the day named.

W. D. Conn, Jr., Assistant Attorney-General, for the state.

It is true, as stated by appellant, that it is uncontradicted that appellant was adjudicated a lunatic in 1932 in Tallahatchie county. The record will also show, and without contradiction, that she stayed in the Mississippi Asylum for the Insane only a few weeks at that time; that her husband sent her money to come home on and that she has not been in an asylum since 1932.

Hoye v. State, 169 Miss. 111, 152 So. 644.

The record fairly shows that appellant was released from the hospital shortly after she was put in there. The act of the authorities in releasing her at that time, on its face, shows that they had "passed judgment" on her mental condition and had adjudicated that she was "sane, or had recovered her sanity and was entitled to a discharge."

There is not one single scintilla of proof in this record that the appellant was incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong or that she was incapable of realizing the nature and quality of her act. This is the true test, so far as Mississippi is concerned.

Smith v. State, 95 Miss. 786, 49 So. 945; Hoye v. State, 169 Miss. 111, 152 So. 644; Grissom v. State, 62 Miss. 167; Eatman v. State, 169 Miss. 295, 153 So 381; Elmore v. State, 143 Miss. 318, 108...